Pretty Lights

When I was a child all of the California towns had strings of lights across the street at Christmas time. They were free to all.

This was shortly after the depression years. My parents learned many lessons during that time. They were 30 so nothing was thrown away. I wore my sister’s dresses after she outgrew them but I didn’t mind. She liked to dress up, I didn’t. Anything was good enough for me.

When Christmas arrived we knew we would receive one gift from my mother and dad. We also got a gift from both grandparents so we were blessed.

My mother carefully packed the Christmas lights away, folded the icicles and everything was stored until the next year. Those lights looked new each year.

We didn’t have snow, we had rain. The Christmas lights cast their magical glow on the rain soaked streets. I know Heaven will be as sparkling as those streets were.

When World War II started my parents decided to leave California and move back to Colorado. I loved the snow at Christmas.

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Then I lived with my sister and her husband on a farm in Iowa. Christmas came and we rode the train back to our hometown of La Junta.

The railroad was in our family for many years. Both of my grandpa’s retired from the Santa Fe Railroad so the trip was a Christmas joy.

Even the smallest towns had bright multicolored lights. My nephew Jimmy was two and a half years old. He was the first child I had ever been around. We showed him the pretty lights that spread across the streets as we passed through the towns.

“Pity ‘ites,” he crooned every time we went through a town.

Many years later I started teaching kids in church. We put on plays each year.

After one of our plays I was picking up the straw off of the floor, when several kids came running back into the church. “Come and see,” they told me, taking my hand. “You have to see the sky.”

I followed them and there in sparkling color were the heavens lighted up as bright as a Christmas tree. Those “pity ‘ites” were beautiful. It was the only time I ever saw the Northern Lights in Colorado.